An Unforgettable Close Call
Radio Operator Jack E. Greer, 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines, 5th Marine Division.
After landing on Iwo Jima near the base of Mount Suribachi on the afternoon of D-day, 19 February 1945, Jack Greer spent the next several days trying to unload supplies and keep the beach cleared while dodging Japanese mortar and machine-gun fire.
The days on the beach brought several close brushes with death or being wounded. On the second day we had to work the beach regardless of enemy fire. . . . The amtracs and tanks left 12- to 24-inch ridges in the sand as they drove along. I was working one area when a Nambu [.25-caliber Japanese machine gun] opened up. The first instinct, and training taught us, in such situations is to fall flat immediately and seek cover, but for some reason rather than falling flat against the near side of an adjacent amtrac ridge, I did a western roll type leap in the air to get behind the far side of the ridge.
As I was in the air I could see the Nambu bullets pelting the near side of the ridge where I should have fallen by instinct and training. Had I done so I would have been stitched like from a sewing machine from my feet to my head by the bullets. I lay there fully aware of how close a call this had been and kept seeing it over and over in my mind’s eye—the straight line of bullets spitting into the sand. I can still see this vividly today when I think upon those times.
Breaking a Barrier
George C. Cooper, officer candidate, Camp Robert Smalls, Great Lakes Naval Training Station.
In June 1944, Chief Petty Officer George Cooper was one of 16 sailors selected to train to become the U.S. Navy’s first African- American officers on active duty. The 12 who were commissioned as ensigns and the 13th who was made a warrant officer became known as the Golden Thirteen. And, as size would have it, Cooper was the first of them to wear a naval officer’s uniform. One day during the rigorous training and testing, he was told to report to Commander Daniel Armstrong, the officer in charge of Camp Smalls.
In the course of that conversation, [Commander Armstrong] said, “I don’t know what kind of an officer you’d make for the Navy. In the first place, you’re what we call a hell-raiser.”
I said, “Sir, I don't recall having raised any hell since I’ve been here, and certainly not at Hampton [Virginia] when I was down there as a chief petty officer.”
He said, “This goes back to when you were eight years old and the fight you had with a white boy in Washington, North Carolina.”
So I said, “Well, there’s nothing I can say about that, sir. If you’re aware of it, you must know the circumstances, and that’s all I can say.” What I didn’t know was that he had my commission on his desk at that time.
So then in the course of 24 hours, as I remember, we all had our interviews and got our commissions. I was the only one of the group who could go into ship’s stores and put on a uniform and walk out with it. Everybody else had to have it altered. ... I was the first black man to wear a naval officer’s uniform because my size was just right. I went in and walked out with it that day.
Fortunately, over that weekend we had liberty, and my wife was in Hamilton, Ohio, getting ready to have our baby. I was going home to see my family. I walked into the railroad station in Chicago [wearing my uniform], and that whole station stood still—literally. As I would walk through, everywhere I'd go, everything would stop.
A Hellish Return Trip
Amphibious Tractor Commander Norman S. Moise, 2nd Amtrac Battalion, 2d Marine Division.
On November 20, 1943, Norman Moise's amtrac, loaded with a cargo of mortar shells, was part of the first wave assaulting Tarawa Atoll’s Betio Island. Upon entering the atoll’s lagoon, Moise had to duck into the LVT to avoid Japanese machine-gun fire. Carefully raising his head, he looked toward his landing beach.
There was nothing there. The only activity that I could see was on the extreme northwest point of the island. One amtrac and about 20 Marines were visible. We started toward that point. I told Bro [driver Stanley Brodowski] to stop alongside two Marines, rifles at port arms, wading through the water toward the beach. I told them to get on board and that we would take them ashore. Both looked frightened. The one who appeared to be leading said, “No, get that damned thing away from me!” Apparently he felt safer without an amtrac around.
After delivering the shells and taking on wounded, the amtrac headed back out.
About 300 yards off shore, I broke out a pack of cigarettes from my breast pocket and handed it to the nearest fellow. As the pack was passed around, I thought, “The smoking lamp is now lit.” We were about 600 yards out when I saw a flash from the southwest corner of the island. Immediately, a geyser of water appeared behind us. The strong current had forced our amtrac some distance to the west and exposed us to enemy fire. Another flash was followed by a second geyser of water, this time on our right. I knew that if we turned eastward, the island itself would offer some protection. I rushed forward, reaching toward Bro’s right shoulder to indicate that he should turn in that direction. I didn’t reach him.
A terrific blast splattered me onto the cargo deck. I thought: “So, this is death. It’s not so bad.” Slowly I regained consciousness. I heard screams and felt the frantic shuffling of people around me. When I finally opened my eyes, I was looking at part of someone’s head. Since blood was running down my left cheek and I could not see out of my left eye, I thought, “If that’s mine, I’m really dead.” Reaching up to touch my left temple, I was happy to find it there. Then I staggered to my feet. My pants were bloody. I could feel blood trickling down my left leg. I was having difficulty breathing because of blood gurgling up in my mouth.
I heard Bro scream for me to help him. I had never seen or heard him frightened before, and it upset me to hear him that way now. I was not facing the driver’s compartment, so I was unable to see him, but with what little breath I could gather, I screamed, “Oh, shut up!” He did. When I turned I saw why he was so upset. He was still in the driver’s seat, but his torso was bent backward into the cargo compartment, and our starboard gas tank was on fire. I was sorry I yelled at him.
A Surrender on “the Rock”
Radioman First Class Richard A. Harralson, Navy Radio Station, Corregidor, Manila Bay, Philippines.
A sailor pressed into service as an infantryman, Richard Harralson was fighting outside one of Corregidor’s tunnels, at Monkey Point, when he learned of the 6 May 1942 surrender of the island, nicknamed “the Rock." After sitting dazed for a while, Harralson joined other confused, milling sailors inside the tunnel when suddenly, from the direction of one of the tunnel’s entrances, which was barred by a steel door at the top of a flight of concrete stairs, a loud “bang, bang, bang" boomed out.
We just ignored it for a while. It banged and banged again. So finally I felt I needed a resolution to this situation; it was impossible where we were. So I went up, and I opened the door.
There was a tiny Japanese soldier. I don’t think he was over five feet tall. His clothes were kind of a blue-gray, worn khaki. He had a leather belt with pouches on it. He was standing there with his rifle at rest, gun butt on the ground. His helmet had a net and was full of branches and twigs. He was standing there nonchalant, at ease. We stood there looking for a little bit, and then he waved me on. . . .
As I passed him, he handed me some of their ration, a piece of what I would call hardtack. So I went over and stood there. Everybody was out. They put us in a line. Of course, there were other Japanese soldiers there too. We started down this path. We passed a bunch of bodies by the side of the path. They were Philippine Scouts. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and they had all been bayoneted through the throat. So that told us these people weren’t playing.
I think we stayed on the Rock for the next three or four weeks. There were some pretty nasty things done.
An Awe-inspiring Sight
Tail-gunner Alvin Keman, VT-40, USS Suwanee (CVE-27)
An aviation ordnanceman, first class, Alvin Keman had one of his most unforgettable experiences of the war soon after his TBF Avenger took off during the Battle of Okinawa. He later wrote Crossing the Line: A Bluejacket’s World War II Odessey.
That a soldier sees only the pack of the man in front of him is an old saying, and had been true for me through Midway and even the sinking of the USS Hornet in late 1942. But at the vast battle at Okinawa, where the full might of the United States was assembled for the first time in the Pacific and the death throes of the Japanese Empire began, the entire war and its ending seemed largely visible, at least from the air, for the first time.
The American Seventh Fleet extended as far as the eye could see, its planes darkened the sky in their numbers, and antiaircraft fire literally made bright the darkness. The Japanese sent the world’s largest battleship, the Yamato, named after the nation itself, to its actual and symbolic doom, almost unescorted, a sacrifice to the death of Japan. Hundreds of American carrier planes toyed with it like a cat with a mouse for hours.
Young Japanese samurai rode to their death in Kamikaze planes, one-man bombs, one-way assault boats, and manned torpedoes. ... Out on the ocean, huge fires raged on carriers like the Franklin, the Bunker Hill and the Enterprise, targets of suicide attacks, and the picket destroyers trying to intercept the kamikazes coming from the north broke into pieces under direct hits from the enemy planes.
To those of us who had seen and smelled the smoking hulks of Battleship Row at Pearl Harbor and sailed in the single-carrier task forces of the early days of the Pacific War, it was an apocalyptic scene, a breaking of nations, the day of justice. In August we heard of the dropping of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. We knew nothing of the technology involved and cared almost nothing about the morality of using it. The issue may have been raised but only to be disposed of quickly. They had attacked us, we had finished them with whatever means were at hand. That is what war is. We had learned the hard way.
On Board a CVE at Leyte Gulf
Pilot Henry Pyzdrowski, VC-10, USS Gambier Bay (CVE-73).
Early on the morning of 25 October 1944, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) “Hank" Pyzdrowski anxiously sat in the cockpit of his TBM Avenger as the powerful Japanese Center Force bore down on his escort carrier and the other vessels of task unit Taffy 3 during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.
I was scheduled to be the last plane off. As we sat there waiting, I could see the 18-inch shells of the Yamato coming. They were shooting at us in Technicolor. It was beautiful. They used different colored shells for ranging.
I had a torpedo, full of gas, and ready to go. It was getting pretty grim, so I asked my crewmen to leave. I could take the plane up alone and attack without the crew. All I had to do was turn to starboard after launch and attack any ship, they were so close.
After three attempts were aborted because the captain was maneuvering to dodge the shelling, the ship took hits and slowed, making it impossible to launch the plane. I got out and they catapulted it off the bow. I was depressed that I hadn’t been able to launch. Out of a job, I went to look for our flight surgeon, a friend from home in Pittsburgh. His station was in the island. I found him slumped over another body, his neck cut almost in two. I took his wedding band and put it in my jacket.
The order to abandon ship was later given.
I then went down to the wardroom to see if I could help. There I found eight pilots who had built tepees out of mattresses and were singing naval ditties. They were inebriated. (An aunt had given me a case of Scotch before we left the U.S. I rationed it well and had about ten fifths left before the battle.) The LSO came down and the two of us helped push them into the water.
On the way past the sleeping quarters, I saw a body on the deck; he showed some life as he tried to hold his hand up. He couldn’t talk but kept gesturing with his hand. Then I spotted his wedding band and knew what he wanted. As I took the ring from his finger, his hand fell, and he breathed his last breath.
I was in the water for 2½ days. Aircrews were better trained at this than the ship’s company, so we did what we could to keep their spirits up. As we drifted we passed by damaged and sinking Japanese ships. Aboard one ship, the Chikuma, an officer yelled and his marines lined the rails. We thought we were going to be shot. He yelled another order, they snapped to attention, and saluted us. The ship later sank.
Behind the Scene at the Surrender
Captain Stuart S. Murray, USS Missouri (BB-63)
Some 25 years after the 2 September 1945 official Japanese surrender on board the Missouri, Commander Etta-Belle Kitchen of the Naval Institute’s oral history program recorded a series of interviews with then-Admiral Stuart Murray, U.S. Navy (Retired) in which he recounted his career in the navy and provided a detailed account of the preparations for the surrender ceremony and the event itself. The following anecdotes are excerpted from the admiral’s oral history, which the Naval Institute published in 1971 and republished with annotations in 2001.
In preparing for the highly choreographed event, Captain Murray had to attend to a myriad of details—from calculating how much time the wooden-legged Japanese foreign minister would take to cross the Missouri’s deck to the precise positioning of participants, other officers, and photographers. One problem arose late when the surrender documents arrived on board 20 minutes before the ceremony. As Murray recalled, “One look at these documents and, you might say, all hell broke loose!" The enormous papers measured about 20 by 40 inches, but the beautiful mahogany table for their signing was only 40 by 40 inches. The captain led a frantic search for a larger replacement, finally having to settle on a crew mess table, which was brought out and covered with a wardroom tablecloth. According to Murray’s account of the ceremony:
The Japanese proceeded on up and took their positions in line and something like two and a half or three minutes after nine General MacArthur came out and came down and took his position on the after side of the surrender table. He made a few remarks, there was a prayer said, and the “Star-Spangled Banner” was played, and he made a few remarks about hoping this would usher in permanent peace and so forth, then he turned to the Japanese and asked them to please come forward. . . .[Foreign Minister Mamoru] Shigemitsu. . . sat in the big chair, or got in it rather awkwardly.
As he sat down in it, this wooden leg of his went out and hit the tie rod that holds the legs of the table up. As you know, a mess table is collapsible and it’s held by two diagonal rods from the center of the table, one from each end leg, with a light hook loosely over the tie rod between the two feet at each end. He hit this enough that it rattled. You could hear it on the quarterdeck. And it moved but it didn’t drop. Our fingers were all crossed, all those who knew how it was.
Admiral Murray recalled that later during the ceremony
The Russian cameraman, who was on this platform just forward of the surrender deck. . . sneaked down from the platform, crept along crouching way down and carrying his camera, and started up the ladder to the surrender deck. I suppose he thought he would have a very good chance to sneak up on the deck and nobody would know anything about it and he would have no difficulty whatsoever in getting away with some pictures of it. Well, the difficulty was he walked right in front of me and the chief bo’sun’s mate. ... I just nodded my head towards the bo’sun’s mate and we both just walked over and caught him as he started up the steps. We grabbed him by the trouser legs. His suspenders didn’t hold very well and his trousers kind of dropped down to his knees, but that was all right, we just dragged him right on down and the chief got him by the back of his coat, his shirt, and I grabbed by his feet and we carried him, face down, across the deck, gave a swing, and swung him up on his platform about four or five feet higher up.
Well, the other photographers over there had been watching this and they undoubtedly had had the idea that they would do that too if he got away with it. They could hardly contain their amusement at this thing. They thought it was a wonderful joke.
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